Iylaine follows a monster down

Iylaine sat up slowly. Her body ached as if she had been crushed, and it was cold and sore from lying on cold stone. Worse, her stomach was churning with nausea, and she had a putrid odor in her nose and a taste of bile in her mouth, as if she had vomited.

There was a fire near her, but she dared not turn towards its comfort. She already knew what she would see. It did not breathe nor stir in the slightest; she could not hear its presence at all, but she felt it. Somehow.

Certainly she smelled it. She longed to creep across the floor to bury her face in the fire and get its odor out of her nose. She wanted to burn her clothes off her body, because they reeked of it – but then, if it carried her again, it meant her skin would be pressed against its clammy skin.

And she had meant to lie beside Malcolm that night! Against his warm, soft, Malcolm-​​scented skin! At that thought she could not help but moan out of her sheer soul’s agony. Surely Malcolm would find her! Somehow.

Though she moved and moaned, still the creature did not stir. Finally she could bear its silent presence no longer and turned around.

She was startled at first to see that it had washed the grime from its body, combed its hair, and covered its loathsome nakedness with fine, strange clothing not unlike that of the dark elf who had held her imprisoned the last time.

But there was no doubt it was the same monster who had carried her away. There was no doubt that it was – or had been – an elf.

It sat as still as if someone had washed and dressed a cadaver and propped it up to sit, but she knew it could move if it needed to. She also knew it would not move so much as an eyelid if it did not.

She stared at it with an appalled fascination. She felt all the instinctive, gut-​​wringing revulsion of a living creature before the dead of its own kind, but she knew it would be so much worse when at last it moved and all her instincts were again turned upside-​​down.

It had to be a nightmare. Any time now she would wake and find herself safe in her bed. No! In their bed. She would simply wake in Malcolm’s arms, and he would tell her it had all been a terrible dream.

She would say, “When you went out to put Devil away, I only stepped outside a moment to look in my window like a grubby peasant child… and in my dream, instead of going back inside, a horrible monster came and carried me away!”

And he would laugh and say, “Silly Baby! That’s what you get for peeking in windows.”

Oh, Malcolm! When next she saw him, she would never let go of him again.

After a while, when she still did not wake, she went from praying the monster would not move to wishing it would do something, if only to blink occasionally as living creatures did. She could not stare down a corpse.

Perhaps if she spoke it would dispel the dream. “Who are you?” she whimpered.

She did not wake at the sound of her voice, but at last the monster moved. For the first time she saw it breathe. It took in a deep breath, and then spent it in a hoarse whisper: “Druze.” Then it took another and said: “The Dead.” Then it smiled.

It was the elf Druze. She shook all over and let out another involuntary, shuddering cry. Malcolm had told her of this elf. This was the elf who had gruesomely killed her father’s horse, and who had done worse things with the men and women he had killed, though Malcolm would not tell her what.

This was a fate worse than mere death: to be killed far beneath the earth by a monster of her own people, in some manner so terrible that Malcolm would never have consented to describe it to her. He would not have told her of her own death! It was almost funny in a way, and so she laughed a pitiful laugh that shuddered off into a sob.

The elf clapped his hands in delight at her laughter. He took a deep breath and whispered, “Iylaina!”

She gagged as the air from his lungs struck her face. He was rotten inside and out. It seemed that he only breathed to speak, and he could only speak by taking a deep breath and forcing it out in a whisper.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded. “I’m an elf too.”

“Hurt you?” he gasped. “I want to – help you. And I need – your help.”

“Help to do what?”

“To find my son.”

“I don’t know your son,” she whimpered. “I don’t know any elves.”

“You know,” he frowned.

“No, I don’t know. I don’t know where he is. Please let me go home.”

“First you help me – find Vash.”

“Vash is your son?” she squeaked, and her teeth began to chatter in response to this new horror.

All she knew of Vash’s father was that his eyes were green and that he had an affinity for earth. This elf had taken her far below ground, and in the firelight she could not quite say what color his eyes were – or once had been – but it seemed quite possible that they were green.

“I have three sons!” he wheezed, grinning proudly. “But no daughters! You shall be – my daughter! Iylaina!”

“Oh, no, oh, no,” she wailed and scrambled to her feet.

Druze stood with all the grace of a living elf, still smiling.

Was this why Vash had never wished to speak about his father? Was this why he had not wanted her to meet the other elves? Were there others like Druze? Did they all become like Druze in the end? Would she?

She felt a wave of warmth wash over her, and the sound of the fire was replaced by a low whirring like the sound of many tiny wings. She realized she was about to faint.

Druze realized it too and reached out to catch her, but his cold hand on her wrist was better than a pail of cold water in her face, and she awoke at once and pushed him away.

“No! Take me home!”

“First we find – my son,” he insisted.

“No! I don’t want to find your son! I want to go home! To my house, or to my father’s, or to the keep, or anywhere! Take me back to Malcolm! To any men! I don’t care! I don’t want to be an elf!”

“You are,” he frowned, and his face was suddenly menacing.

“No! I want to be with the men!”

“First we find – my son.”

“No! I won’t help you!”

This time when he took her wrist, his cold grip was too strong for her to shake off. “It is not – for you – and not – for me,” he growled. “It is – for all. It shall not – end with him.”

He dropped her wrist, and she rubbed it furiously with her opposite hand, whimpering in horror over the touch of that rotting flesh, which felt like nothing so much as a bloated, jelly-​​filled glove over a skeletal hand.

“I hurt you?” he whispered with a hideous look of concern.

“Don’t touch me!” she hissed.

He looked mournfully at his hands. “They are dead,” he wheezed. “Dead hands still love – my daughter. Dead hearts still love.”

“Please, please, please take me home, Druze.” She hoped saying his name would soften his dead heart.

“First we find – my son.”

“Vash?” she quavered. His name, which she had so rarely dared pronounce, was like a charm against fear. His name was some shadowy part of him, and she had called it forth. It gave her a shadowy strength.

“Vash!” he smiled.

Oh, Vash! He could not help who his father was. Her sweet, kind cousin, who had always been so gentle with her on the rare occasions they had met! Who loved to lie amid bluebells because they smelled like her cheeks! Who had called his friends beetleheads for a year because she had said the word once! Who had come down into the darkness of the earth to save her, knowing that he might never return to the sunlight!

“Do you know where he is?” she asked warily.

“You will help,” he said. “Let us go.”

“And then you will let me go home?”

“First we find – my son. Come.” He turned abruptly and began to walk away from the fire.

She could follow him, or she could stay alone by the fire – if he would let her. The fire would burn out, and she would be left alone in the dark. Her greatest fear was that she would die alone in the dark.

She did not know what she or Vash or Druze could do against this dark elf who was not an elf – this creature of Hell or of the eclipsed moon – but she remembered the strength she had found when Vash had reached through the bars of her cell and held her hand. Perhaps he too was afraid of dying alone in the dark, but he had come willingly down, down into the dark to free her. Now she would do the same for him. Perhaps they would only die, but they would die together.

“Wait!” she cried out to Druze, and she ran after him down the sloping corridor, down into the dark.